THE BIG PICTURE
“Drink water. Get sunlight. You’re basically a houseplant with more complicated emotions,” reads a meme that was ubiquitous online in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It wasn’t unusual in those days to need a reminder to tend to the basics of body maintenance. Between shelter-in-place orders, high anxiety, and disruptions of all kinds to the routines many of us have for self-care, the last year and a half have wreaked havoc not just on bodies, but on our feelings about those bodies.
The pandemic has affected our bodies and our body image in numerous ways, according to studies in the UK and North America. Research reveals increases in eating disorders and sedentarism, as well as an increased desire for thinness
